


On the Periphery

by OddlyExquisite



Series: Green Things [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Love Letters, M/M, Mutually Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-25 23:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddlyExquisite/pseuds/OddlyExquisite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>This is what it means to love a Jedi.</em><br/>Reconciliations and misunderstandings. Obi-Wan writes a letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Periphery

**Author's Note:**

> 1) 'Alf shukr (a thousand thank you's) to Merry_Amelie: the Beta without compare! (Go read some "Academic Arcadia" and revel in the stories about the life Qui & Obi should have had!)

* * *

 

The thing about being a Jedi is that you get used to a certain un-belongingness.

You get used to blending into the crowd at diplomatic functions, just as you get used to standing out in seedy downtown bars, your brown and cream uniform a stark contrast to the flashy costumes of the patrons. You learn to fade into the background, just as easily as you learn to command armies. You were born for this, this twice-exile.

You: the wave of calm in a sea of chaos.

You: the storm that follows the calm.

You: the contradiction that answers every question.

You: Jedi.

And a Jedi comes to expect this, this half-yet-un-belonging. Because while the Jedi are an integral part of the universe in which they exist, they, unlike the other cogs in the grand machine of the universe, can only ever occupy a single position. A nerf-herder can go to university and become a scribe; a shuttle driver can quit his job and become a bounty hunter; but a Jedi can only ever be a Jedi. (Or its opposite, which, in the end, is still in many ways the same thing.)

Because Obi-Wan had known Jedi who had left the Order; who had left the Order and had come back again because although they had donned civilian clothing like any other, scrubbed the floors of their shops like any other, faced down intruders without their 'sabers like any other, the deep, unwavering Force sense in the marrow of their bones had been a constant reminder: being Jedi is not a thing easily unlearned, or easily forgotten.

*********

 

Logically, Obi-Wan knew he'd been the one avoiding Qui-Gon and not the other way around. And avoiding was, he supposed, a rather strong word for what he'd really been doing, which was allowing his former Master and his former Master's new Padawan to settle into their new roles without interference from the newly Knighted old apprentice.

“Bullshit.” Bant points her fork at him accusingly. “You've been having the biggest self-pity party I've seen this side of Coruscant.”

“What?” Obi-Wan pauses, fork halfway to his mouth.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Bant says slowly, “that perhaps Qui-Gon still wants you around? That maybe he's confused by the fact that you've been taking missions back-to-back without talking to him when you're in Temple?”

“Well, I'm grounded now,” Obi-Wan says, puzzled.

“Yeah, _forcibly_ ,” she mutters, savagely stabbing her nuna eggs.

Obi-Wan puts down his fork. “Bant.”

“Hmm?”

“Talk to me.”

Bant inhales once. She lets the breath out slowly and rises from her seat. She lifts her tray, sets it down, and lifts it again.

“I think,” she says eventually, “you'd find that you burn fewer bridges if you focus on confrontation rather than avoidance.”

“A bit un-Jedi-like, though, isn't that?” Garen says, setting his tray down beside theirs.

“Actually,” Obi-Wan says, “no.”

  
*********

 

Obi-Wan thinks about it later and admits that he ought to at least try. He had been the one to leave, after all. He should have fought the Council harder, should have argued longer, should have just admitted to Qui-Gon's unconscious body then and there that he was completely, stupidly, irreversibly in love with him.

He'd done it before; a second admission shouldn't have been as difficult.

It had happened one night on Allyuen, when Qui-Gon, having been awake for 27 hours, had settled a pallet in the corner and left Obi-Wan to guard the miners' wares alone. During that period of his life, Obi-Wan had acquired the nervous habit of checking on his Master's sleep during missions. Perhaps it was a temporary paranoia, or a foreshadowing of events to come, but either way Obi-Wan never went to bed without making sure his Master was sleeping soundly, still breathing.

At daybreak, the transport had come to pick up the agrinium, and Obi-Wan had gone to the corner where his Master slept. He had sat on his haunches for a long moment, counting the Jedi Master's breaths, until, inexplicably, he'd felt something surge within him and had whispered, _'I think I'm falling in love with you'_.

Qui-Gon hadn't heard him, of course, but that hadn't made the admission any less painful. It didn't change the fact that, after saying those words, Obi-Wan realized how grave an admission it had really been.

_Hold a thing too tightly, and you will smother it; this is the worst kind of murder._

When the Jedi Master wakes, his hair is mussed and unbound, framing the regal face, the graceful throat...

Obi-Wan averts his eyes.

*********

 

Qui-Gon hadn't found out what was in the pinewood box until Obi-Wan was nineteen. It had been an accidental discovery; a nudge of his elbow when he'd been searching for their extra comm set and it had fallen, spilling its contents onto the floor.

They were such innocent trifles, really. It shouldn't have mattered so much as it had in that moment; shouldn't have mattered that people had been writing his apprentice love letters for years now, and he hadn't known. And it wasn't all that surprising, because Obi-Wan was, of course, eminently lovable. The most shocking part about it was the discretion with which his Padawan had locked these private things away. Obi-Wan had, in the past, discussed everything with his Master; things that were both of greater importance and more trivial than these love letters. What made them so different?

Qui-Gon quietly puts the letters away and doesn't mention them to Obi-Wan.

How much of his Padawan would he never even know?

*********

  

The missed opportunities begin to bother Obi-Wan. The idea that he'd been all but avoiding his former Master because of fear and a little resentment is an alarming realization. The thought of Qui-Gon, wounded but accepting, is an image so heartrendingly typical of the aging Jedi Master that Obi-Wan is on his feet and in the outdoor training room before he even realizes he's moved. He searches the courtyard until he finds Qui-Gon, drilling Anakin on a basic kata.

He lurks at the perimeter beneath the shade of an impressive Naffa tree, watching for a few minutes before the young boy spots him.

“Obi-Wan! Mister Obi-Wan, sir! Did ya see that? Did you see me do that??”

Qui-Gon turns, face lifting when he sees him.

“Very impressive, Anakin,” Obi-Wan replies with a smile, moving across the courtyard to greet the Master and Padawan pair. “Keep this up and you'll be a Master swordsman before you know it.”

“He's taken to the forms quite well,” Qui-Gon adds, “not unlike a certain other apprentice I trained.”

“Yes, well, that was more than likely the result of superior instruction.”

Qui-Gon throws a crooked smile his way before setting Anakin through the paces of his cooldown. It is another few minutes before he comes to stand by Obi-Wan's side. “So, my former apprentice...to what do I owe this pleasure?”

Obi-Wan clasps his hands. “I've been thinking that we haven't seen much of each other lately.”

The Jedi Master hums in agreement. “You've been busy making a name for yourself, and I have Anakin to tend to, now.”

_I have Anakin, now._

Obi-Wan swallows. “I was just wondering,” he continues carefully, “if you would like to join me for dinner.”

“Dinner?” Qui-Gon echoes, as though Obi-Wan had suggested Wampa-riding instead.

“Well, yes. It...I...I don't necessarily mean now. But at some point,” Obi-Wan hesitates, “I haven't eaten a meal with you in a long time. I'd be grateful for your company.”

The Jedi Master nods slowly. “Dinner, then. Is tomorrow too soon? We'll prepare it together.”

Obi-Wan smiles, feeling lighter than he has in days. “You mean _I'll_ make it and _you'll_ critique my every effort from the sofa.”

“Cheek,” Qui-Gon mutters as he shades his eyes against the sun, squinting at Anakin. “What would Yoda say?”

“That I'm a lot like you, I expect.”

The Jedi Master laughs.

*********

 

The next letter comes quietly, one foggy afternoon while Obi-Wan is busy teaching.

_And you, my mountain, will you never walk towards me?_

Obi-Wan reads the letter, puts it in his box, and locks it away.

 

*********

 

Qui-Gon remembers the first time he'd fallen in love.

He had been young; a new Knight on his own, completely unconcerned with attachment and all of its pitfalls. He had been assigned a temporary mission partner for Hoth: a Jedi Knight older than him by a year, just as intelligent, and far more magnetic. She was a delicate thing: tiny, with large, doe-like eyes and a teasing laugh that made his knees shake. They had become fast friends, and then more.

In the months after their separation he'd thought about her, and something in his stomach would drop. Something would send his pulse racing, breath loud in his ears. He'd felt...drawn to her. He had only realized what it had meant after duty had taken them away from one another, and as the years had passed he had been convinced that he would never feel anything like it again.

But then, decades later, there was Obi-Wan.

It had taken some time, far longer than many might expect, for him to recognize what his twenty-year-old apprentice actually meant to him. And it hadn't come on the wave of some slow realization, either. He had not been afforded that luxury this time around, no. It had come over him like an Allyuen sunrise: blindingly clear and piercingly brilliant.

They had been standing in the morning light, later than usual. He and Obi-Wan had both expected to miss the brilliant display they had become accustomed to seeing before bed. To their ultimate surprise, they had reached the surface just in time to watch red-purple light break over the sky.

_“It's funny, isn't it?” Obi-Wan had murmured. “It's almost like it waited for us.”_

And it was a short sentence, nothing unusual about it, but when Qui-Gon had looked at Obi-Wan then, he'd felt as if the ground beneath his feet had fallen away entirely.

 _It fades_ , he'd assured himself in that moment, _you'll move past this, the feeling fades..._

After all, this was Obi-Wan. There was no delicacy left in him, no coy glances, no teasing smiles. Obi-Wan was all fire and earth and straight-forward honesty: nothing like his first love, who was water, air, and transience. No...his Obi-Wan was fierce and beautiful and he _burned_.

_You'll move past this..._

But standing there he had known with devastating, clarion certainty that he was in love and he was never going to recover.

*********

 

“You don't like it when I mention Naboo,” Qui-Gon says in the middle of helping Obi-Wan make dinner, hair tied back, elbows deep in chopped onions.

“No,” Obi-Wan says, poking at the cooking steak cautiously, “and I can't imagine you do, either. We don't need that many onions, by the way.”

“The possibility of my own death does not frighten me so much as the possibility of yours. And are you sure? I think we do.”

“It's just...I know how difficult it must have been. To recover. I had the healers send me reports, but they'd edit out the details they didn't want me to know. I couldn't be there. And before all of this I'd been...”

“You'd been what?”

“Insufferable. About Anakin.”

“You shouldn't blame yourself. I certainly don't.”

“Yes, but,” Obi-Wan says, flipping the steaks over, “I can. Because you don't think I still feel the same way, but I do. And Master, please: at this rate we'll have onion breath until next week.”

“We are all required to make sacrifices, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan turns. “Are you talking about Anakin or the onions?” His joke falls flat beneath Qui-Gon's gaze.

“Both.”

Obi-Wan sets the steak tongs down, very deliberately.

Qui-Gon sighs. “You were ready. It would have been selfish of me to keep you as my Padawan when there was a boy who desperately needed training in front of my very eyes.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says, “Yes, I know.”

*********

 

It is said that the Jedi feel most at home among their own kind, that no one else inhabits quite the same world.

And it is true, to a point. The Jedi did not belong in the same way, didn't fit quite so neatly into quotidian existence as the nerf-herder on Alderaan or the shuttle driver on Coruscant. The Jedi were a thing apart...a thing elusive; the intermediary between worlds.

It was said that the Jedi felt most at home among their own kind. And while many Jedi do not consider this to be false, un-belonging is a familiar feeling.

*********

 

He answers the letter.

 _If you,_  
_yielding_  
_to a love that_  
_recognizes no bounds,_  
_go by night,_  
_Know this:_

 _I have come to feel it is dreams,_  
_not real life,_  
_upon which I can_  
_pin my hopes._

When he musters up the courage, he brings it to the Post Master, and gives her a significant look.

She takes the letter without a word.

*********

 

This is what it means to love a Jedi:

You may love, but not at the expense of duty. Not at the expense of selflessness. Your love cannot be selfish or greedy or wanton. Your love must have limits, must be contained within your bones so that it does not leap free at inopportune moments. Your love must be unattached.

But what is love, if not emotion at the expense of duty?

What is love if not limitless?

And if your love is so flawed, does that make it love at all?

Here is the rule:

A Jedi must never know attachment. You must never know selfish, greedy, wanton, irresponsible love because a Jedi, above all, knows his duty. Knows that duty comes before the personal, the emotional, the instinctive. Knows that duty is what sets him apart from the humdrum of daily life in the galaxy. Knows that duty is the barrier that separates a Jedi from all else, a barrier that divides worlds.

Here is the realization:

Your love is a choice.

And you have spent your entire life hearing that love is chance, that love is fate, when the truth of it is that love is a choice made from moment to moment. Sometimes it is very easy to love. Sometimes it is extremely difficult. But it is always a choice. And you know that love is a choice because you are still capable of doing your duty, because love without choice is a form of slavery. You know this because if you were a slave to your love, your duty would mean nothing.

Your love, therefore, is unattached. Because it would never come before duty. Because it would never need to.

Nevertheless, despite your realizations, you know only these things for certain:

1) You are meant to be a Jedi.

2) You are in love.

3) While the two are capable of coexisting, neither of these things requires anyone, anywhere, to love you in return.

  *****

**Author's Note:**

> Obi-Wan's poem is a mixture of two of Ono no Komachi's poems: KKS:657 (Love) and KKS:553 (Love).


End file.
